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Dave's RV-7A Builder's Log
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Date: 5-15-2017
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Number of Hours: 3.50
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: More aft skirt work
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Today was solely devoted to working on the aft skirts, but I will need more time (and possibly some different tools) to get these correct. Bending metal in two dimensions results in fairly predictable outcomes, but once you try to bend it in a third axis the adventure begins. As the pictures show, the skirts start out fairly flat at the top of the fuselage, but pick up a significant bend as they go down the sides. In addition, they also bend subtly downward as they go from front to back…this is the challenge. Any time I would add a little bend in that direction, I would tend to get a “pucker” somewhere else, and not always where I thought it would be. As a result, my constant attempts at finishing always left me with an unacceptable gap somewhere.
The other issue is that I know that this will all change once the skirts are riveted in place as rivets exert force on the metal in a different way than clecoes do. And, once riveted in place, the option of removing the skirts for additional bending is gone. What to do? I will evaluate a couple of options, to include a bead roller and a metal shrinker to see if one of those might work…if not, it will be back to hand bending until I finally get lucky and get the gap I need. More to come…
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After 1 1/2 hours...still too much gap
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Right side looks better, but needs work
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Looks ok from the side
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